Does Moodle useful for doing action research? If so, how ?
You give almost know information about yourself, so it is hard to know in what way to answer. I will answer assuming that you are a teacher wanting to improve your own teaching practice.
But really, I am not sure the question you ask makes sense. Action research is mainly about why you do, and then how you reflect on that and try different things. So, the question is, what part of your teaching practice do you want to improve? If you want improve what you do when standing in front of your class, writing on the whiteboard/blackboard, then the blackboard will be involved in the action research. However, it is not right to say "The blackboard is useful for action research". It just happens to be involved in the part of your practice that you want to improve.
Similarly, if you want to improve your practice around online teaching, Moodle will be involved, but Moodle is just a tool. Now, Moodle is a very powerful and flexible tool. Therefore, it would probably suggest many topics for action research, if that is an area you are interested in.
Hi Baudha and welcome to Moodle.org!
Yes, as Tim suggests, it would be of great help to us if you can tell us more about what you have in mind. Do you want to do action research on elearning practices or use Moodle as a social platform to facilitate action research, i.e. professional development courses? What records/data do participants need to gather and how are they going to reflect on it and who with?
Here is a collaborative action research report by a team of Speech Communication teachers using Moodle. It shows the learning ecosystem in classrooms and online with Moodle in order to address issues of assessment of student performances. Like Tim and Matt said, Moodle is one part of the description of learning process. Action research focuses on teacher-identified issues and investigates them within their teaching practice.
Hi, all
Don, I enjoyed reading your work, and it was noticeable that you referred to the 'action research cycle'. This distinguishes it from practitioner research as far as I am aware-so essentially has a certain structure to the methodology-iterative plan-do- review cycles to inform practice. Whereas PR doesn't have a set methodology-tis more of a pragmatic-needs must approach, in that the context/setting/practice needs will often determine action and a one off type project is fine (I am led to believe from my reading and teaching). I guess this has implications for researching with Moodle tools, in that tool selection e.g. survey, questionnaire, evaluation, quiz to name just some tools- would need to be considered in advance in order for a 'fit' with the research question (s) and methodology, maybe.
cheers,
Dawn
Hi Don,
Thanks for the "report." I really enjoyed reading it. The included syllabus and assessment rubric gave me a couple of new ideas for modifying what I do with my computer applications students.
Thanks, Dawn, for your reflections on the difference of action research and practitioner research. I did not know that before and it was a useful comparison. Our teaching team is now on our fifth cycle of research. That paper represented our third cycle. Actually, we got tired and did not publish anything on our fourth cycle, and just tried to fix up the Video Assessment Module that we created. I attach a link to a set of slides describing that module and how it works with rubric-based assessment in Moodle 2.x. https://moodle.org/mod/resource/view.php?id=8145
I hope we can publish a paper on our fifth cycle, and share all of this on a Hub course--AR cycles never end! But I should not get too deep into the particulars of one AR project. I think the focus of AR should never be on Moodle, but on the whole ecosystem and the educational issues that the team or individual teacher is facing in the curriculum. The issues change or get deeper year by year.
P.S. When your school works as teams, you need to share questions a lot amongst the teachers. Thus we really need the Question Bank fixed--sharing questions at the System Category level is really not possible and some structural changes may be needed. Vote for these two Tracker Issues if this is a concern for you: MDL-12403; MDL-41924.
Don, hi
Saw the slides....just had a second look through too . I really like the way you and your team have managed to nail something which I always found tricky: the assessment of student presentations. I always found....the weighting very difficult...you know-how on earth do you mark out of 20 for body language or facial expressions/delivery...and then justify why one student got 8 and another 19! It was always justifed by having Mr or Mrs A.N.Other staff-member), but not great solution eh! Reason being we had Bb at the time and did those presentations on paper.
I like the way you have blended (scuse the pun! ) Moodle features (rubrics and video) and made huge progress-from what I used to have to do- as far far as I can see. Yes agree, always scope for movement forward too though eh...tis the point of AR. Hope you get to write up some further cycles-be a real shame not to.
Cheers,
Dawn
Hi Don,
Thanks for sharing. I enjoyed your article and it looks like a great idea.
Some thoughts...
I've done similar projects for self- and peer-assessment of presentations. The point you made about using an appropriate microphone can't be stressed enough; it's well worth spending the money on a decent quality hyper- or super-cardioid mic (AKA "shotgun" mics) which significantly reduce background noises (They effectively only record what is directly in front of them). I use this one from Rode: http://www.rodemic.com/microphones/ntg-2 However, you'll also need a video camera (DSLRs are good) that have a compatible mic input socket. I've seen good camera mics that slot onto the top of DSLRs.
I've found that audio recording only options are popular among some learners (who may be self-conscious or shy). Where possible, I also get classes to design their own assessment rubrics and modify them as they go along. That way, you can be really sure that they know what they're looking for and why.
I'm not surprised you had issues with Moodle's file management system. Moodle uses PHP proxy scripts to serve files and large files, e.g. videos, will quickly fill up the server's memory. 3 party hosting is definitely a better idea. If privacy is a concern, you can always set up an Amazon S3 "bucket" server for cheap and fast file storage and serving.
It occurs to me that if you're going to use Youtube.com, it might be a good idea for learners to have their own Youtube.com accounts and manage their own presentations from there. That way, they can also use them for eportfolios and/or their own websites. It could promote ownership, control, and possibly greater personal investment in their presentations?
Again, thanks for sharing!
Thanks again Don for sharing those slides.
Just to add, if you want to delve into self- and peer-assessment, it's worth looking into some of the popular cycles of reflective practice, e.g. Donald Schön (business oriented), David Kolb, or Graham Gibbs. There are also other ones in more specialised areas that may be more relevant to learners' particular studies/practices.
BTW, the link from the slides http://moodlelang.org appears to be broken. Is there anywhere we can access this content repository?
Sorry about that broken link--that repository has been replaced by a hub. We have twenty courses to share on the Moodle Association of Japan Hub, of which about 15 courses are EFL-related. This is also a good site for seeing demos of PoodLL, Progress Block, Sharing Cart and other third party contributions. After you register and set up this Hub with your site, you are entitled to one free download. After that, you need to contribute something (upload a course you wish to share, make a review, help with the server) to accrue more points to make another download. http://hub.moodlejapan.org
Thanks!